Let's Find a Game
Hello everyone. Flash here :) So today I wanted to talk about some stuff regarding the squad's current situation. I know there have been a few pages like this in the past, but we have never really come to a conclusion. I hope you are reading this Burner. Lastly I want to apologize that I'm always the guy that makes these rather dramatic posts, but I really feel we have to do something. Alright. Let's get into this. The Hyena Brigade is Homeless. The Hyena Brigade is homeless. Ever since CWA ended we have been. But whats interesting is we started looking for a game a few months before cwa even ended. So why have we not been able to find a game? Are we not finding a good enough one so we just do nothing? Do we not want to find a new game, and prefer to just continue writing stories on the wiki here? How come we have not found a game? How come there isn't a Hyena Brigade squad on Planetside 2 or Star Wars The Old Republic yet? The only answers I can come up with is that we have been a little too picky when it comes to games. Understandable, since we went from CWA which was so perfect for us, but where has being picky gotten us? Nowhere. We are still in the same place we were 2 years ago. I know right? Its already been two years! Something else I'd like to discuss is that there is a lack of communication in the squad. Which is why I feel the need to make an entire page dedicated to this topic, just so it gets everyone's attention. And still, this might not even get seen. We. Are. Inactive. And its hard not to be, since all we have is this wiki and a handful of squad members to work with. How do we become truly active then? We find a new game. We find it now. Burner, I know you are busy with college, And honestly it's quite remarkable that you have maintained the squad this long. But even if you are innacive on a new game, if you just MAKE the squad with the Hyena Brigade name and invite the squad members (perhaps broadcast on the wiki so everyone sees) then we could at least have SOMETHING to play on. Some eligible cannidyts are: Star Wars The Old Republic Let me talk about this for a minute. Swtor is a Star Wars MMO that has been around for years and is owned by EA. The game is mostly story based, so you unfortunately can't really jump on and instantly go to a squad member, as we did in CWA (no teleport) however there are free roaming aspects to it, and there are ways to meet up and RP. I think the best bet we have is to all join the same server on swtor, make our character, (We can choose trooper or Jedi. But we have to all join as the same faction and class. If one member joins as a Jedi and another as a trooper or smugglers, then we will be dropped on different starter worlds with different stories. So we all join as the same faction and class and server. We friend each other. We look on the map for each other. We find each other. Then we can just ditch the story and do RP missions against enemies. (For trooper class the starting enemies are literally called "The Separatists".) Now, let's talk about the RP. Role playing in swtor is extremely easy and extremely fun. we could role play almost exactly as we did in CWA, and maybe even better. There are more actions, more weapons and vehicles, more customization, and just more of everything. Really all we need is enemies to fight and boom! The Hyena Brigade is doing missions again! It's really that easy. Swtor is the closest thing to cwa and is VERY fun. The game is completely free, but you can get a membership or Cartel Coins/ Republic Credits for real money if you want more stuff. There are squad and friend features in swtor, as well as pvp (Player vs. Player) aspects. It has TONS of beautiful, awesome planets to fight enemies on which makes the mission possibilities virtually endless. The game is rated T, but the reason for that rating is for things mainly contained in the story. If we ditch the story, then younger members never have to go near that. The game doesn't require a super good computer, especially if you just turn down all the settings, but if you have a REALLY lousy computer, then you might run into some problems. I will look more into the exact system requirements and post them here soon. But I have an i5 processor, 6 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 310 graphics card, 64 bit Windows PC and once I turned down the settings a bit, it ran just fine. I will mention that swtor is only for Windows. Not MAC. And it is about 20 GB space. Edit: Okay these are the minimum system requirements: Personally I think we should just go for swtor. It's very similar to CWA except it's more story based, and it's really made for RP. (There are some awesome RP features in there). It is less friendly than CWA, because it was never meant to be a kids game, it was never meant to be Clone Wars Adventures. However, this game is very big and has many features that are extremely similar to CWA's. There are so many things we could do, whether it be duels or missions, or flashpoints (sort of like dungeons, you group together with a squad and try to take down bosses and stuff) Or even house building (yes, they have housing features almost exactly like CWA's). This game is the closest thing we have to CWA and is really great. One last thing I will mention about the game is that if you are not a member, there is a chat slow for world chat (I dont think it affects squad chat though) so it might make for difficult comm. An easy solution is to just have a Skype group chat. We don't have to call and talk or anything, but we can just use text chat. But its all up to Burner, and if he doesn't want to move to Swtor there are some other options. One is a game we have abandoned, but still might be worth considering for casual gameplay: Planetside 2 Alright so we originally thought of moving here as you all know, but squad members had computer issues with it, so we just sort of lost hope in it. However, my concerns for this game lye more with the social features, or lack there of. There seems to be no teleport options, and although I am quite a Noob when it comes to Ps2 considering I've only logged about 6 hours in, I find it very difficult to actually get to the location that your friend or squad is at. You can easily message someone (/msg *Players Name*) and it is easy to send friend requests (Burner I sent you a friend request on there btw) But to actually get to the location your friend is at, is rather difficult. HOWEVER, I do feel since the game is completely built for multiplayer and co-op, that there are ways that I just don't know of yet since i'm a noob to fight with your friends easier. Additionally, you can coordinate places to meet at. (certain bases, etc) and then you could go on missions together. Real missions. Not just RP, a real war against other players online. Which is AWESOME. And, Planetside 2 has good squad features. If we just figure this out a little more, this game could be perfect for us. But for now, I really want Burner to make a Hyena Brigade squad on Planetside 2 and invite us to it. Then, even if certain players have computer issues with it or just are inactive, we can still have a stable place to go play with other squad members. It is rated T for violence. It hasn't got blood. Its about 10 GB of space, and is available on Steam as well as the official website. These are the minimum system requirements: * OS: Windows XP. * Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 or higher / AMD Phenom II X2 or higher. * Memory: 4 GB RAM. * Hard Drive: 15 GB free. * Video Memory: 256 MB RAM. * Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 series or higher / AMD or ATI 4850 series or higher. * Sound Card: DirectX compatible. * Network Connection: Broadband. We have already discussed Planetside 2 before in detail, but i'm trying to post as much as I can about it here as well so everyone can easily see it. There are different servers and different Empires/Sides as well. I believe in the past we settled for these: Server: Connery Empire: Vanu Sovereighty Which is good because I am already on those. Now, i'm listing these games not so we can just ponder it and think "Mm. That's a nice idea". But so that we can finally come to a conclusion and get a game to move to, even if its a lousy game, even if the squad is inactive, we can at least have a solid base to start with. Let's talk about our current game... sort of. Star Wars Uprising Okay, so apparently we have settled for Star Wars Uprising. Originally I thought this would be a good idea, but honestly it isn't made for us I think. It's a mobile game for one, and most people, myself included, are not mobile gamers. I am a PC gamer, and honestly I couldn't stand the controls for the game. (Not to mention how unstable it is. It crashes more than a Tie fighter.) The game is small, hard to navigate, and really nothing special at all. Maybe you guys are having fabulous missions in there, I don't know, I uninstalled it. However, I do get the feeling not many people are very devoted to that game, and it really isn't meant for us. Steam Group Additionally, the Hyena Brigade could have a group on Steam. If you don't know what Steam is, it is a game providing company that let's you easily buy and play games through their software. Once you download it, you can get games and they will be in your library forever and you have access to nice features such as Steam Workshop (Mods) and other things. Steam also has Steam groups. Now let me explain why this is necessary. If we had a Hyena Brigade Steam Group, then we could invite all the squad members and then we could easily schedule times to play different games together. We could use it to broadcast announcements more effectively than here on the wiki, and we could use it to easily keep track of all the squad members. Its free, and only takes a few seconds. I think pretty much everyone has Steam, and everyone's active on it since you have all your games on there. Its just a really easy way to stay active and schedule times to play multiplayer games like Swtor or Planetside 2. Its really nice to have and is a step in the right direction. Group Chat If you don't know what a group chat is, I'd be disappointed. But its where everyone can talk in a chat room and get notifications on their phone and stuff like that. And Hyena needs one. Communication on the website is great, but a group chat on our phones would make communication instantaneous. And the whole group will get a notification when the chat is active so there's no more guesswork as to when people will be online. There are four effective platforms for this to happen on. Phone I'm guessing none of you will pick this one, but its possible to do this by sms text message. If most of us don't have smartphones, this is always something we could fall back on. but I personally dislike this method, and there are other solutions to the smartphone issue. Skype Simple platform. Its been around forever. You can download on your computer or on your phone, and its completely free. There's also video and voice group calling, which could be nice if the squad wants to just hang out and talk, or if we wanna make gaming videos. Kik Its a free app on any device, and lets you be completely anonymous if that is your preference. There is no desktop version, its a smartphone app only. Groups are super easy to create and very simple. There is only text messaging, so no calls. (you can send pictures, short videos, and other media) Fast, easy, efficient. Discord Discord is kind of a bridge between Kik and Skype. It's made for gamers, its completely free, and there's a desktop version and an app. You can create "text channels" and "voice channels" within the same group that serve different purposes. (for example, a "SWTOR" chat, a "Ps2" chat and a "Steam" chat.) There are voice calls, but I'm not sure if it supports video calls. Thanks for listening. -Thermo Its Time to Pick. Burner, as I've said before, I know you're busy. I really don't mean to pressure you. However, it HAS been 2 whole years and we have no game. I really think we need to pick a game now. Since there are some really great games out there, (swtor, swtor, swtor :D) I think its time to give one a try. Even if you are too busy to come on and lead the squad on missions all the time, if you at least have a squad or group or guild or whatever on an MMO, then we could at least have a shot at bringing the squad back to full strength. Its just been so long since CWA ended, and its sad that we don't have a game to play on yet. I'm asking you Burner, pleading with you, to make some squad on a game, whether it be Planetside 2 or Swtor. Or else allow one of us to create it, because the squad is inactive and will continue to be inactive until we get a game. No pressure. Again, its so awesome that you've been maintaining the squad this long, even after Cwa died. But we really need a place to fight together on once again. I really hope Burner gets this message. Or somebody gets it. <-- that's why we need a group chat ;) Thanks everyone. -Flash